06.10.2025
Big Day Out for Youth Groups as New Interns Commissioned
Over 100 young people from all over the dioceses converged on Taney on Saturday afternoon (October 4) for Dublin and Glendalough Youth Council’s Big Day Out. An afternoon of fun activities, barbeque and live music led up to a history–making youth service during which DGYC’s first ever interns, Molly Clarke and Nana O’Sullivan, were commissioned by Archbishop Michael Jackson.
Organised by Dublin and Glendalough’s Youth Ministry Coordinator, Emma Fawcett, young people came from Kill O’ the Grange, Rathfarnham, Taney, Kilternan, Castleknock and Clonsilla, Rathmines, Redcross and Wicklow as well as from the newest youth group in the dioceses, Rathmichael.
Molly comes to DGYC from Nelson in New Zealand via Holy Trinity, Rathmines. She moved to Ireland last year to study in Bow Street Academy and found a warm welcome in Holy Trinity where one of the Curates encouraged her to apply for the internship. “I grew up Christian and my parents had a huge hand in shaping my faith. I definitely found a more personal relationship with God around the age of 16 or 17 but it was developed through youth groups so I feel very privileged to be working with Dublin’s young people,” she explains. Molly will serve her internship in Kilternan Parish.
Nana is a third year student at University College Dublin where she studies English with Creative Writing. She is Irish and South African and attended a lot of house churches growing up before arriving at Holy Trinity, Rathmines where she came to know and appreciate Anglicanism. She will serve her placement in Kill O’ the Grange. “I am excited to join the youth ministry team there and will do my best to ensure young people know that God loves them as they are right now, that we will receive and value them in whatever way they arrive to youth group and that any questions they will have will be explored. And perhaps most importantly, I want them to experience the joy of the Lord and have fun,” she comments.
Introducing the youth service, DGYC chairperson, Canon Alan Breen, said they were gathering to commission “two fantastic women who realise God has a call in their lives”. He encouraged the young people to look around the church and reflect on the afternoon of activities and realise that they are not alone. “You can get together and have fun and connect with church. For all of us, God has a call on our lives,” he added.
The Revd Scott Evans addressed the service focusing on the Parable of the Sower [Matthew 13]. He observed that the story was not about wheat, seeds or farms but rather it was about potential. “The one sowing the seed knows that it has the potential to grow because the soil has potential for life to flow from it. Like each one of us, it can be a source of life, growth and nourishment for others,” he said examining the different aspects of life that stop people flourishing.
He continued: “Let me tell you this. You are soil with boundless potential. You may feel walked all over and beaten down but — if you let this in — there is so much that God wants to do in and through you”.
Molly and Nana were not just being sent out to throw seed, he said. “You are being invited to join in our sacred mission,” he told them. “Those in ministry in God’s church are not just called to be throwers of seed who resign ourselves to the inevitably that there are some places in this world where life just will not grow. You are being invited to join with us in the crucial act of transforming places of limit into gardens of abundance — teeming with God’s life.”
Before commissioning Molly and Nana, Archbishop Jackson continued the harvest theme. He said we need the seasons and the new interns would need to trust in the ground and the elements and the soil where they would work. He said we all have a ministry which is shared. He told Molly and Nana that they are not in ministry alone and they are surrounded by people who care for them and want them to flourish. “I hope you will continue to be examples to other people who will, in turn, become interns in the way you have committed yourselves to this ministry,” he said.
Molly and Nana led prayers during the service and worship was led by the wonderful Anna Shepherd and her band.